There was an exquisite heat, and some kind of incredible pain. Cooling metal popped and pinged and the clipped rotor blades turning to an end overhead sang out a thrum, thrum, thrum of slow revolutions.
Click. The radio headset spat through the fat air.
'Zero?'
Stryker's voice.
Click.
'Zero, come in.'
Click.
'Zero.'
Click.
'Zero, is Logan dead?'
"I dunno. . . I'm down. . ."
Pushed words hung, swung, and fell from his teeth, settling, matted, in the blood from Zero's split lip. Blood and pain. An alarming quantity of both crouched heavy on him, like a wild dog that would rip his throat if he even twitched under its weight.
'Zero, is he dead? Is Logan dead?'
Dry and dirt-mingled gravel clawed up from the crash crunched underfoot.
'Zero, come in!'
He bared his teeth in ineffective protest as the headset was yanked from his neck. His lunge against the constraint of the helicopter's corrupted frame gained all of a millimetre and went unnoticed.
Zero watched with wordless indignation as James Howlett raised the com device.
"You tried to kill me."
'Logan?'
Stryker's surprise was clear, even through the static.
"Where's Victor."
Stryker seemed to deliberate for a few seconds. When he replied, he was calmer, though his words were delivered hastily.
'Come back to base. I'll explain everything.' A pause. 'We'll take down Victor together.'
"Wrong answer. After I kill Victor, I'm coming for you."
Now Stryker's voice turned; he was desperate and anger frayed the desperation.
'Logan, listen to me. If you go down this road, you're not going to like what you find.'
"You wanted the animal, Colonel—you got it."
The headset was discarded. It joined the hunks and slivers of metal debris wedged into the rubble. Howlett's attention found Zero and Zero blankly regarded the strange, raging creature.
"Those were good people back there," Howlett said. "Innocent people." The thick, clenched muscles in his jaw and neck and the ropey veins pushing out over his knuckles made him look twice as furious as he sounded, but Zero didn't flinch. He responded to the accusatory comment with choked laughter. Who the fuck did this guy think he was?
Howlett turned away, shoulders squared, and started walking away from the wreckage. His fists were still clenched into dirty knots. Zero could see lines pushing up under the skin of his hands and imagined those unnatural claws, ready to jump out.
I bet you wanna kill me so bad.
Zero's eyelids flickered. His forehead and cheeks felt tight with the hotness from the sun and the convulsing, dying engine. He wanted to be free, but at the same time he felt reassurance in the fact that could not be. Because he never had been. Not really.
The wolverine's figure reduced and wavered in the heat that hissed up from the ground.
Zero hollered after him: "It's funny how good, innocent people tend to die around you."
It was a hopeless gesture, but the commentary had tapped a sour chord. Through eyes stinging from the burning dust of the crash, Zero saw a flash of silver as James Howlett dropped his claws against the road. A crowd of sparks swirled up. They looked too slow—they were glowing, flickering fish. One silently settled in a smudge of the helicopter's bleeding engine oil. It ignited with a soft whuff.
Zero heard himself scream as the flames obediently ate up the trail of fluid towards the crumbled body of the machine. Anger and terror were indiscernible from one another. They mixed like sweat and diesel.
Howlett's wobbling image retreated. He didn't look back.
"Fuck you, you fucking animal! Fuck y—"
The flames had fingered their way into the gas tank. In one roaring expansion of air, the helicopter's body burst and consumed itself, and those left inside.
